Where should we be getting our news?

As I was sitting in one of my classes this morning, my professor made the grand and sweeping statement that we should not Google to get our news. At the very least, we should have a specific digital source of which we find our news, but we should not be willy-nilly searching into the void for our news. While doing research for this week's blog post I found an article that showed how a gubernatorial campaign is using Google ads in a new way of highlighting news stories about the candidate. The majority of people will Google people or things they're relatively uninformed about and from there amass the knowledge they are seeking be it from just using headlines or from clicking on various links to become further informed. 

If one knows how to do proper research, in other words, are able to distinguish proper information from clickbait then googling your news is not going to be especially detrimental. It is when googling leads to only focusing on sensationalized headlines and not seeking to independently verify information can begin to make a mess of things. Now what is occurring within the aforementioned article and Google ads is that this campaign is altering the headlines on  Google ads that are linked to various news stories and opinion pieces to ones that suit the campaign. The way it is being done is not illegal or
against any rules, per say, but one could argue it is intentionally misleading and just in overall poor taste. Even if someone is not looking for campaign information with the words they are searching, they could potentially receive that information unwittingly. Lines are getting blurred but according to Google, it is not against the rules. 

So, where do you get your news from?

New political ad strategy in Virginia: Promoting news articles in Google search results

Comments

  1. Ambria BurtonOctober 22, 2021 at 11:47 PM

    Hi Keara! I agree that people should not try to actively search online in order to get informed of current events in the news. I remember one of my professors informed us about Google News. It is a software by Google that will link a bunch of current events from many news publications. I liked using this program because I did not really have to “search for news” but instead click around and read several different articles or watch several newscasts. I think with Googling with news, many are under the assumption that since Google is providing a link to a news site, that the news site itself is going to be credible but that is not the case. Google searches are based on an algorithm and the algorithm is going to pull up almost anything related to the specific topic you searched about. Good job. I really enjoyed this post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JoshNovember 2, 2021 at 10:09 AM

    To answer your question, the place that I love to get my news from is the website the Guardian. That doesn't mean that I am only searching on there for news because sometimes I'm in the middle of a conversation and just need a quick tidbit not a whole article. I believe, in all we have to change the way people look at news research. I look at it as a game of tug of war dealing with research, on the one side you have a group and on the other you have a group and they are both pulling you ideal and persuading. I believe that if people looked at news media with more of mind of a researcher or discovery than maybe these huge political biases wouldn't exist. I don't blame one single person for this because I wasn't a political science major having to go through multiple different articles and sources I would be just like people who don't do this, believing the thing I agree with and taking it as truth! In all very good article I enjoyed reading it, it made me think.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hunter SaineNovember 30, 2021 at 9:07 AM

    Google is a great tool to find information, but it is definitely important to know how to filter our what you don't need. Politicians are going to get more and more crafty with how they use technology to push their agenda. I agree that it is important for people to realise that just because it's high up on Google results doesn't mean it is accurate or a good source. People and companies pay a lot of money for SEO experts that can put them on the top of the page. I would be interested to see what suggestions others have to combat this problem. Good post!

    -Hunter S

    ReplyDelete

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